This is the thirty-first in a Series of Reminiscences by E. R. Brown. Brown was born in Pulaski County on August 9, 1845. His writings are abstracted from the “Pulaski County Democrat” on microfilm housed in the Pulaski County Public Library, Winamac, Indiana. Find links to earlier entries at the end of this article.
Published in “Pulaski County Democrat,” September 14, 1922
It has seemed to me that the above subject was one deserving a place in these random sketches. I have mentioned the early interest in religion, as shown by a general fidelity in attending church, but it is not unusual, or was not formerly, to find very rough people, with slight pretense of being moral, if not highhanded lawlessness in communities noted as religious centers.
Beyond question our pioneers, particularly those who came with a view of establishing permanent homes, averaged high along moral lines and for many years there was a minimum of crime or violations of law here. It must be true also that while all had faults, they lived up to high standards, in many ways, were less sordid and grasping, more concerned not only as to what was lawful but what was fair and honorable, placed a higher value on their word and would go further in lending a hand, then is generally true of people.
All of this and more, has been the consensus of all opinions I have ever heard expressed on the subject and I am heartily disposed to say amen to it. In an address some years ago, Dr. F. B. Thomas cited the remarkable fact that large sums of money, mostly gold and silver, taken in at the land office in early years were kept here without safes or vaults and sent away in wagons without secrecy or armed guards. No robbery or holdup was ever attempted and not a penny was stolen.
When I was growing up we never locked any door of the house, barn, smokehouse or cellar and I do not think any of our neighbors did. My father kept his money in a bureau drawer, the lock of which could easily have been picked with a nail or broken open by a child and when he had occasion to pay a bill he went to it as openly as a banker goes to his safe. Yet little of value was ever missed except a canoe now and then or a piece of bacon, which was charged to strangers passing down the river.
The hogs were turned out to shift for themselves in the spring and were, as a rule, satisfactorily accounted for in the fall and cattle treated the same way. If they strayed off several miles it was not unusual not to hear from and recover them. In a few cases attracting wide notoriety men were charged and tried in the courts for taking this stock but the charges were not proved. Some disputes about it also occurred, sometimes resulting in personal encounters and reaching the courts, the point being as to its identity or trespass committed by it. It was easy to be mistaken about animals being absent from March until November, while hungry brutes and poor fences seldom go well together.
Likewise, the sorry scandal, long true the world over, was true here, namely that there was often less forbearance and trifling disputes advanced swifter into a bellicose, belligerent stage between those holding different religious views than with others. However, it would seem that the concurrent testimony of so many persons as to the high average moral character of those early here and the high average they maintained as to be square and honorable, must be supported by the fact.
The only apparent contradiction I know of is that so many early merchants failed, largely because of bad book accounts. But from an extended business with people up and down the Tippecanoe I would be inclined to say that that was the fault of the merchants themselves.
This county has a court record with reference to crime which is very remarkable. Our courts had been established almost twenty years before anyone was found guilty of a penitentiary offense. And in the one or two cases before that, involving that penalty, there was no charge or a miscarriage of justice. Not many counties anywhere have such a record. I wish, by the way, that I could write more in detail about these early courts. I only know that from the start they were presided over by high-class jurists and always commanded the respect of the best people.
My father often insisted that his only calling was that of a farmer and that his only ambition was to be a good one. Yet he perhaps knew as much of the inner workings of these courts as anyone not more directly connected with them, and he often spoke of them with high praise. He accorded the credit of first giving dignity to our circuit court and lifting it above the charge of truckling to the rough or lawless element to Hon. John W. Wright, an early judge. He used to relate that a large, bad man once came into Judge Wright’s court from another county partly intoxicated. After standing in the aisle and leering around for a while, he bellowed, “By G-d, I am a horse.” In a mild but firm voice the judge said, meanwhile looking the bully full in the face, “Mr. Sheriff, you will put that horse in the stable (jail) for four hours and if you need any help the court will furnish it.” So he let it be known everywhere that proper decorum was to be observed and the laws were to be enforced. However, if he found that in any way hard to do here, I never heard it.
The crime for which the first man referred to was sent to prison was horse stealing, long so common, almost everywhere. It is indeed strange that so few horses ever have been stolen in this county. I do not know that any horse has ever been stolen in Indian Creek township where I am best acquainted. The crime was evidently rife in the counties northeast of us in my boyhood. For sheriffs and posses to come down the Rochester and the Monticello road in pursuit of culprits was very common. At times they rode at a gallop, with pistols drawn, following freshly marked tracks. At others they stopped to inquire about parties barely ahead of them and then the galloping-drawn-pistol-act would be staged. Occasionally they returned soon with the accused, hand-cuffed or tied to their horses. In one instance an indolent young man, whose worthy people lived near, was among those caught. He had gone elsewhere to try his hand.
For the most part the pursuers returned empty-handed. For some reason never explained, all traces of those they were following seemed to vanish somewhere down the river. It was surmised that they crossed over at some obscure ford and taking advantage of the sparsely settled region with its dense thickets between the Tippecanoe and the Monon turned back on the course and eventually sold the horses in or near Chicago. The further surmise was natural that there were regular routes for this, known to the initiated, with relay stations kept by local people. But no evidence of the latter ever developed.
With so much counterfeit money being in circulation, it was also common to suspect certain people of being counterfeiters. If they lived apart, under conditions of some mystery, particularly if they always seemed to have money, with small known incomes, they were liable to be thus accused. A prominent instance was that of a man who lived down the river on the west side and who with several of his neighbors finally left between two days. Yet, beyond a few wives being taken without their husbands and a few others being left behind whose husband had departed, nothing ever developed in that case.
Whether moral or immoral, there was a large amount of drinking and drunkenness in the early days, and it resulted in rowdyism, brawls, bloodshed and other lawlessness. This is not meant to be an impeachment or temperance lecture. Yet when it is assessed, as it is so often, that pure rye or corn whisky was formerly comparatively harmless and that when cheap, less of it was comparatively used than after it became dear.
I knew personally that the facts do not warrant the statement. In that respect Winamac and Pulaski county are far better today morally than in early days. I earnestly hope the same is true of profanity and of obscene expressions and stories. The former was simply a raging torrent in my boyhood and if any of our citizens are now lascivious and foul in their common talk as many formerly were, they should be promptly quarantined like those who are spreading other deadly plagues.
Links to Earlier Articles
- Part one(Common Inconveniences) October 2018 newsletter.
- Part two (Land) June 2019 newsletter.
- Part three (Trees & Timber) November 2019 newsletter.
- Part four (The River) February 2020 newsletter.
Later editions are carried as separate posts.
- Part five (Public Roads)
- Part six (Schools)
- Part seven (Markets & Trading Points)
- Part eight (It’s Mills)
- Part nine (Wild Game)
- Part ten (Feathered Wild Game)
- Part eleven (Animal Pests & Birds of Prey)
- Part twelve (Fishing in the Early Days)
- Part thirteen (Wild Fruit)
- Part fourteen (Early Commerce on the Tippecanoe)
- Part fifteen (It’s Homes and Home Life)
- Part sixteen (House Raisings)
- Part seventeen(Clothing a Family)
- Part eighteen (Log Rollings)
- Part nineteenth (First Trip to Winamac)
- Part twenty (Grubbings and Wood Choppings)
- Part twenty-one (Apple Peelings)
- Part twenty-two (Sausage Makings)
- Part twenty-three (Parties and Amusements)
- Part twenty-four (Early Wheat Raisings)
- Part twenty-five (Quilting Parties)
- Part twenty-six (Early Religious Practices)
- Part twenty-seven (Early Church Buildings)
- Part twenty-eight (Early Clergymen)
- Part twenty-nine (Early Funerals)
- Part thirty (Cold Winters and Wet Summers)